


The Power of Orange Knickers

by Dahlia_Llewellyn



Series: Strange Little Girls: A Tori Amos Playlist [4]
Category: The Beekeeper-Tori Amos (album), Tori Amos (Musician)
Genre: Female Friendship, Loss of Control, Love Triangles, Other, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 02:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6592543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dahlia_Llewellyn/pseuds/Dahlia_Llewellyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Power of orange knickers/under my petticoat./The power of listening to what/you don't want me to know."--Tori Amos, "The Power of Orange Knickers" (feat. Damien Rice) off of the album The Beekeeper (2005).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Power of Orange Knickers

**Author's Note:**

> "The Power of Orange Knickers" was the fourth piece I wrote in the "Strange Little Girls" series, and it was the first to feature a friendship between two women. The girl, Rorie, who narrates, is not to be confused with Aurora (also sometimes called Rorie) in "Black Dove(January)". This is a different Rorie, and she has a different set of issues.

She taught me the power of orange knickers the summer before it all flooded.

Emmie was a beautiful girl, one of those with eyes that made even grown men rethink their marriages. She had a litheness to her from toe to top, and I was absolutely in love with her.

Not romantically, mind you. I was in love with who she was, who I remember her to be. Since I last saw her, she could look like any other woman in any other part of the world. We are as estranged as two former binary stars, forever drifting apart as gravity, time, and the secret forces of the universe pull them apart.

There is a love amongst women which men cannot know, just as there is a hatred that lies deep in the heart of us. While we love our friends, we also loathe them. It’s called sisterhood.

I learned this the hard way, as anyone learns anything, the summer that the flood came and washed away the entirety of our friendship. The flood came in the form of a boy named Jake Frank (stupid name, I know), and we both fell in love with him without even knowing it.

Of course, neither of us really knew what love was except in the theoretical sense. We felt certain that love involved roses, a good deal of chocolate, and that elusive, beautiful movie kiss. Oh, that kiss!

That summer of our sophomore year, we talked almost exclusively about love and this boy, Jake Frank, that we both acknowledged that we’d never date, if only for the other’s sake. To be truthful, this promise was only really necessary for Emmie to protect my delicate ego. After all, unlike her I had never held hands with a boy, had never even kissed one, while she had and knew how to use her tongue, too.

One night, she told me that we had to go out the very next day and buy me some orange knickers—a thong, preferably—and see what that did for my low self-esteem. I giggled, but she insisted when I saw her the very next day.

We went to the store, barely containing our laughter, and went to the lingerie section. I always went red in the face looking at all of the satin, lace and barely-there contraptions that women apparently wore for their men. I assumed with a sick heart that I would one day have to give in and buy one of those see-through negligees and possibly even a thong.

“I found them!” Emmie said suddenly, holding up the brightest, most ostentatious underwear I had ever seen.

“What the hell are those?”

“These, my dear, are the orange knickers you shall wear proudly from now on.”

She handed them over like a secret, freely and with a flick of her wrist. I took them from her with the reverence of one who was about to lose her virginity (or was it fear? Sometimes those things are exactly the same), and I knew she was not going to let me leave the store without buying them.

My cheeks red and my eyes downcast, I went to the counter and paid for a pair of lacy tangerine hip-huggers—with cash—and walked out to Emmie’s screeching laughter.

“You should see your face,” she chortled. “You look like a strawberry.”

I couldn’t believe what I had just done. I had never bought underwear that didn’t come in innocuous packages, the kind you get at Wal-Mart with little hearts and rainbow stars on them.

We went back to Emmie’s house where I tried the new knickers on—she insisted on calling them knickers because she believed that anything British was innately sexier than our American equivalents. After all, the word panties made me sick.

I came out in the orange knickers, Emmie and I both laughing. I don’t know why, but when I was with her I didn’t feel half naked and embarrassed. That’s when I learned why she wanted me to have them—there was a definite power to wearing something sexy, even if no one else would ever see it.

At least, I thought no one would ever see it. A few days later, I got a call from Emmie saying that she had the most exciting news ever. Naturally, she told me that a guy had asked her out, and she wanted me to know.

I asked who it was.

“Nobody important.”  
I could tell she was lying. “C’mon, you can’t leave me with _that._ Spill.”

She was quiet on the other line for a long time. “Promise me you won’t be mad.”

“Promise.” That was also a lie.

“It’s Jake. Well, he called me and I was, like—I couldn’t help myself, Rorie. He’s just so damn hot, and he wanted to see that new Spiderman movie or whatever, and I just got swept up.”

“I see.”

“You _are_ mad.”

“No—I mean, I thought we’d agreed he was off limits.”

“Yeah, of course we did, but…”

“But what?”

Another one of her pregnant pauses. I was scrunching my face on the other end of the phone, trying not to cry. I wouldn’t let her know the extent of my anger, the depths of how much I hated her in that moment. I knew that whatever she said, whatever excuse she had, it wouldn’t really be enough to justify why she had betrayed my trust.

Our conversation ended with her abruptly saying she had to go, and then I ran to my room, cried my eyes out, and then made a decision that I’m still not sure how to explain. I knew she and Jake were going to the movies, and I knew how to get to the theatre on my bike. I made a determination that I would wear the orange knickers.

As I pedaled my way there, I felt power surging through me. All it took was knowing they were there to make me feel like a superhero. I pedaled and pedaled, starting to feel an exhilaration akin to no other feeling I had ever had.

When I got there, I was sweating, a little bit gross, but I still felt possessed of this energy that no one could have denied. I saw Jake and Emmie laughing over by the fountain, their shoulders touching like so many couples I had seen on screen. And, like so many other movie-perfect couples, they leaned in for their first kiss.

I would’ve gone _Carrie_ on their asses, but I don’t have telekinesis. Instead, I had a pair of angry, lacy, empowering hip-hugger knickers under my capris. I walked within spitting distance of Emmie and cried, “You bitch!”

“Rorie?”

“Who?”

“We sat together in yearbook, Jake,” I yelled. “And this doesn’t concern you.”

I turned my attention back to Emmie—“How could you do this to me?”

Emmie, perhaps for Jake’s sake more than anything, looked completely baffled.

“What do you mean?”

That was it. I started stripping. Now they both looked like they expected the end of _Carrie._ Of course, other people were watching as I did this, but for the first time in my life, I didn’t care what anyone said or thought.

“Did it all mean nothing? Our whole friendship? The stupid underwear? You choose him over me? REALLY?”

“Rorie, put your clothes back on.”

“No! No, let them all look. Let them look at how SEXY I am in my new _knickers._ Yeah, look at me!”

“Rorie, this isn’t funny.”

“No, no it’s not.”

I was down to my bra and underwear, the bright tangerine of the latter standing out sharply against my freckled skin. I crossed my arms over my chest, and finally let the first tear drop. Before long, I was crying like an ocean, wave upon wave of choking sob. I couldn’t stop crying. Not even the orange knickers could stop me.

A security guard grabbed me at one point, and called my folks. I remember people pointing and laughing, people looking mortified and upset. Some boys from school actually looked quite shocked to see I had some kind of body beneath my clothes, not that they ever mattered.

The one thing I will never forget, not as long as I live, is how Emmie looked. As they pulled me away sobbing, I caught a glimpse of her face. She might as well have been a statue. She looked like someone who had been accosted by a total stranger, not by the girl she had called her best friend for nearly two years. She didn’t even claim to know me when some concerned passersby asked.

All that time, all that time, and she didn’t love me at all. She didn’t even hate me. I was just a plaything. All of those times spent talking of boys and our dreams, of life and our theoretical loves, I thought she valued me as much as I valued her.

The profundity of that belief flooded me in that single summer night all of those years ago. It has been more than ten years since then, and I haven’t seen her since. But one thing is for sure: I never loved anyone as much as her, before or since.

Now I have an underwear drawer stocked with all colors, all kinds of knickers. Because if Emmie taught me anything it’s that a girl needs to have something underneath to keep her going.

For that lesson, I am forever grateful.

 


End file.
